The Nightmare Before Christmas in Modesto

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The Nightmare Before Christmas

A stunningly original and visually delightful work of stop-motion animation, Tim Burton's 1993 The Nightmare Before Christmas is 74 minutes of sheer movie magic! This dazzling mix of fun and fright is filled with visual wit, clever songs, funny gags and genuine pathos -- making it a true classic, and probably the greatest stop-motion animated film ever, a painstaking style of model animation that computers have largely done away with. Tim Burton`s skewered sensibility finds excellent expression through the masterful stop-motion of director Henry Selick. As with Burton's prior protagonists Pee-Wee, Beetlejuice, and Batman, Jack Skellington, the misguided hero of The Nightmare Before Christmas is a creature whose idiosyncratic personality consigns him to being something of an outsider in his own creepy-crawly community. The Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, Skellington rules his native soil of monsters and mutants with a despondency wrought from boredom-until, that is, a morose midnight stroll leads him to Christmas Town, where his heart is set ablaze by the merry sights and sounds of the Yuletide season. Determined to have his minions supervise Christmas rather than Halloween, Skellington comes to learn the foolishness of striving to be what one is not.